


Silence and Good Wine

by chinuplilpup



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, basically adaire and hella are sad and in love in god's house, lem is in it for like a sentence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 05:27:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11822160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinuplilpup/pseuds/chinuplilpup
Summary: It’s so uncharacteristic of what Adaire’s seen from Hella for her to brood like a normal person that Adaire questions if she’s imagining it. She is practiced at distracting Hella from overlong grueling drills. She doesn’t know what to do about this.





	Silence and Good Wine

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers from autumn in hieron and winter in hieron

Adaire explores the house methodically room by room, because she can’t think of anything else to do after dinner. Nothing inside of the house is really that weird, and the more she walks through it the less weird the layout seems. The living room and dining room and kitchen slot into place in her head, and the hallway of bedrooms makes sense to her now. 

That in itself is uncomfortable. She doesn’t particularly want to acclimate to—whatever this is. She decides to let herself outside and explore the weird as fuck floating island. 

She walks past Hella’s bedroom door, which has remained firmly shut ever since she spoke with Samol on the porch. There is a distinctly brooding aura emanating from the room. It’s so uncharacteristic of what Adaire’s seen from Hella for her to brood like a normal person that Adaire questions if she’s imagining it. She is practiced at distracting Hella from overlong grueling drills with deliberately idle comments and questions. She doesn’t know what to do about this. 

Samol is still smoking his pipe on the porch. Adaire smiles politely. Once it’s clear Adaire isn’t here to talk to him he gives her a smile and a nod. Adaire leaves him to his blessed silence and picks her way around the circumference of the island. 

It floats past iteration after iteration of Hieron. In the distance, glowing white towers seem to build and unbuild and continuously rebuild themselves exactly the same as before. Adaire tries not to pay too much attention. Nothing is egregiously off with the island itself, and the walk is even pleasant. Adaire completes her circuit and begrudgingly walks back up the now-empty porch. 

Samol is in the living room keeping house. Lem seems to be taking his turn at having a quiet, intense conversation with him. Adaire would stay to eavesdrop on the back end of the conversation if she gave a shit, which she doesn’t particularly. 

She walks past Hella’s door on the way to her own bedroom. Still shut. It stops Adaire in her tracks. She sighs, then goes back down the hall the way she came. Lem is on his way out of the living room and they do the you-go-right, I-go-left dance until Adaire steps firmly to the right. 

“Sorry. Thanks. ‘Night, Adaire.” He averts his eyes and makes his way past her, frowning and faintly damp and sporting an absolute mess of a hairstyle that may have once been a braid. 

“Goodnight.” Adaire runs a hand over her own long braid. A few strands have escaped during the long day, but in a cute way. 

She sticks her head into the living room. Samol notices her and stops dusting an intricate clock on the mantle. Adaire could be imagining the wariness and fatigue in his expression. Well, maybe not the fatigue. He looks old. 

“Do you have something to drink around here?”

Samol visibly relaxes. He drops the dusty rag on the back of a couch. “Any preferences?” 

Adaire thinks for a moment. She’s seen Hella drink a lot of things, but nothing so often that it’s obviously a favorite. “Something strong.”

Samol gives her a smile that is far too knowing for Adaire’s taste. Adaire isn’t even trying to hide anything in particular, but that smile makes her want to double check. Samol disappears into the kitchen for a minute and comes back out with a bottle of dark red wine and two cups. 

“There you go.” He hands them over with a wink. An actual wink. 

Son of a bitch. Adaire decides then and there that she likes him. “Thank you,” she says, genuine. 

Samol just smiles and goes back to his dusting. Adaire takes the wine and the cups to Hella’s room and knocks. 

Hella doesn’t answer. It’s just about evening as far as Adaire can tell, given that the sun is missing and she’s floating backwards through time in god’s house. In any case, it seems early for Hella to be asleep. 

“Hella?” Adaire calls.

Almost immediately there’s a commotion inside the room. Something light bubbles up in Adaire’s chest. She bites her lip to hide a smile when Hella opens the door a second later. 

“Hi.” Hella looks and sounds exhausted. 

Adaire holds up the bottle. “Drink with me?” 

Hella hesitates. Her eyes flick from the wine to Adaire as she considers it. Adaire isn’t hurt by the wariness that edges into Hella’s expression. She isn’t.

Finally Hella says, “Sure. If you like.”

The bedroom is spacious and sparsely furnished, but the intricately carved patterns that decorate dresser and the green embroidery on the comforter tell Adaire that what is there must be fairly expensive. Hella’s armor and her pack are in one corner of the room, and her sword is propped up on the nightstand. Other than that, there is no sign that she’s spent several hours here. 

Adaire bustles her way to the nightstand and twists the bottle open. “Shall we sit on the floor like teenagers?” she tosses lightly over her shoulder. 

Hella stands awkwardly at the doorway with her hip cocked and a hand resting at her belt, as if she would like to be leaning on the weight of her sword. “The floor?”

Adaire barely gives the sword a second glance as she pours two drinks. “Yeah, the floor. You know, to drink. And complain together, and braid each other’s hair?” 

Hella takes one of the cups from her. “When I was a teenager we didn’t sit on the _floor_.” 

She sits instead on the bed. 

Adaire holds out a cup to Hella, but then pulls it back for a moment. “You did at least have wine, didn’t you?”

“We did.” Hella waits until Adaire has given her the cup before adding, “We didn’t talk or braid our hair after.” 

Adaire’s stomach swoops like it did when the moth queen dropped her twenty feet. “Is that an Ordenan custom?” she asks. 

Hella shrugs with a half-grin. 

“Well.” Adaire sizes up the situation. The first thing she notices is that the bed is tall. Hella hopped up no problem because _she’s_ really fucking tall, and her feet don’t even touch the floor. Adaire will have to use both hands and jump a little to get up there. “You had better hold my drink for a moment.” 

Hella takes the second cup. Adaire plants her hands on the mattress and levers herself up. When she holds her hand out for her cup back, there’s something soft and bright in Hella’s eyes. 

“What is it, Varal?” Adaire is almost smiling herself. 

Hella holds her now-free hand up, palm-out. “Nothing, nothing.” 

“Hm.” Adaire holds out her cup. “Let’s see what Samol has for us.”

Hella clinks the rim of her cup against Adaire’s, but Adaire can see the moment that Samol’s name hits her and some of the lightness in her expression falls away, replaced with something dark and brooding. 

Hella takes a deep drink and Adaire follows her lead. The wine is rich and sweet. 

They drink in silence for a bit, almost a foot separating them on the mattress. Adaire wracks her mind for something to say, but she has no idea what might be on Hella’s mind. Hella barely lifts her eyes from the pattern of the wood flooring. Adaire doesn’t want to get it wrong. 

She leans in until Hella turns her head towards her. 

“Do you have any idea,” Adaire whispers, “what the fuck is going on?” 

Hella’s brow furrows for a split second and then the stony look that had settled on her face cracks. She laughs, wry and tired and relieved.

“Like, where _are_ we?” Adaire asks. 

Hella keeps laughing, one hand covering her eyes. 

“I’m serious.” 

“Adaire.” Hella drags her hand down her face. “I have no fucking clue.” 

“Oh, good. I kind of thought I was the only one.”

“Nope.” Hella pops the ‘p.’ They lapse into silence again, and Hella sinks back into herself. Adaire has no idea what could possibly be bothering Hella this much, but whatever it is, she hates it. 

“Samol is a fine storyteller,” she starts. 

Hella doesn’t say anything. 

“Lem looked pretty miserable after talking to him just now,” Adaire says. “Or maybe that’s just what Lem looks like.”

Hella tilts her head back and drains her cup. 

Adaire drags her eyes away from the line of Hella’s throat. Her lips are sticky and her head feels a little heavy on her neck. 

“Well, regardless.” Adaire taps her fingers on the rim of her cup. “Maybe he didn’t get the answers he wanted?”

“Adaire.” Hella’s voice is sharp. When she continues all she sounds is tired. “What did you come to ask me for?”

Adaire blinks. She’s not quite drunk but it’s hard to ignore the twinge of hurt anyway. “Nothing.” 

The second she says it Adaire knows she’s lying. Hella is sitting so close to her but not nearly close enough. Adaire has her hand planted on the comforter midway between their thighs and is leaning forward, towards her. She hastily pulls that hand into her lap and looks straight ahead.

“Okay, fine,” she says. “Sometimes. Sometimes it sucks to be alone.”

Hella sighs audibly and rubs at her eyes and temples as if she has a headache. Adaire wants to reach out and touch her back, her shoulder, her cheek. 

Fuck. She swallows the last of the wine and waits. She has just about given up on waiting when Hella responds, and it’s not the dismissal Adaire had been expecting. 

“I killed his nephew.”

Hella’s hand is still covering her face. For a moment Adaire thinks she’s misheard. 

“Samol’s…nephew?”

“He was my friend.”

Oh. Adaire can understand that. “Did he deserve it?”

“No,” Hella says miserably. 

Adaire wants to push back the tight curls that are too short for Hella’s bun and fall across her forehead and into her eyes. “Did you have a reason?”

“I did,” she says, no less miserably. “I strangled him three times. Someone else would have stopped.”

Adaire carefully files “strangled him three times” in the same far corner of her mind as “Samol’s nephew,” to come back to and perhaps try to figure out later.

“You’re not someone else,” she says.

Hella makes a low noise in the back of her throat. “I know, Adaire.”

“No, I meant.” Adaire is bad at this, at sincerity. “You’re a person. Everyone has reasons for the things they do. We just need good enough reasons to help us live with what we do.” 

Hella rubs at her eyes again, harder. 

“Any decision that led you here,” Adaire bites her tongue on _with me_ , “was worth it.” 

Hella snorts and shakes her head. “Can we not talk about it?” 

Adaire wants very much to stop talking about it. Her stomach hurts, and it’s not likely due to the wine. She’s undone her work towards becoming Hella’s friend by coming here. Certainly she has negated some of it.

“Sure.” Adaire hops down off the bed and puts out a hand for Hella’s cup. 

To Adaire’s surprise, Hella doesn’t let go of it immediately. Instead she lets the moment hang, Adaire’s fingers brushing the backs of hers. Adaire nearly swallows her tongue. 

"Thank you," Hella says. "For the wine."

"Thank Samol, it's his,” Adaire blurts. Then she bites her tongue. “But you're welcome."

Hella lets the moment go. Adaire turns to the nightstand, furiously scolding herself in her head. Thank Samol, it’s _his_? Her blush is probably visible from lamina zero. She takes a breath, steeling herself to look Hella in the eye and make her excuses to leave, but Hella speaks first. 

“Talking about it doesn’t help. I mean I don’t—I haven’t, because I know it doesn’t help.”

Hella is looking at her hands, knotted together in her lap. 

“Yeah,” Adaire says. She swallows her heart in her throat. “Doesn’t help me either. What is talking supposed to do, rewrite the past?”

She thinks of where they technically are, floating backwards in time in god’s house, and almost laughs. Hella glances at the ceiling, her expression sardonic, and Adaire is pretty sure Hella is thinking along the same lines. 

Adaire takes a half-step back towards the bed. “I meant it, too, that I— Sometimes it’s good to not be alone.” Before she says goodnight she needs Hella to know that she didn’t come in to get something from her. 

Hella doesn’t answer for a long, long moment. Adaire half-turns away, telling herself she’s done her part, told the truth, Hella can believe her or not.

Hella catches Adaire's wrist. Her calloused fingers slide across Adaire's skin until her fingertips meet. “Do you want to stay?”

Adaire’s heart all but stops. “Are you asking?”

There’s something desperate in Hella’s eyes and her fingers tighten their grip.

“If you’re asking,” Adaire says slowly, “the answer is yes.” 

Somehow, even after the week she’s had, it feels like the most surreal thing that’s happened to her lately as she moves forward, into Hella’s space, as Hella hunches her shoulders and leans down and kisses her. Hella closes her eyes. Adaire can count her eyelashes as they fan across her cheeks. 

Then Hella tilts her head and they kiss over and over, exchanging warm, familiar presses of their lips, kissing like Adaire has barely done before in her life. Her eyes fall shut. 

When they break apart Adaire is in between Hella’s legs, grasping at her, fingers digging into the creases behind her knees. Hella takes Adaire’s braid gently in her hand and pulls it over her shoulder, runs a thumb down the loose center. 

“Stay the night?” Hella asks. She keeps her eyes on her hands, which are loosening Adaire’s hair tie. 

“Yeah,” Adaire says, “sure.” 

Hella undoes Adaire’s braid, running her fingers through her hair so the light hits it in a way that highlights the red that streaks through the dark brown. 

They kiss again. There’s something desperate in Hella, the way she parts her lips and sways forward into Adaire. Her mouth is sticky with the taste of wine. It lights a fire in Adaire’s veins. Unthinkingly she tries to get a knee up on the mattress, wanting to climb into Hella’s lap, wanting to press her down into the rich comforter and kiss her for real—but the bed is too goddamn high up and Adaire slips and stumbles on the hem of her skirt. 

Hella blinks a dazed look from her eyes, and then she doubles over with laughter. 

Adaire can feel her cheeks heat. She’d be hard pressed to blame it on the wine or the kissing. 

“Okay, Varal.” She tries as hard as she can to sound dour, but really she just sounds breathless. “This house is ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m done.” Hella schools her face. “Come here.” 

She helps Adaire climb up onto the bed, cupping Adaire’s elbows. To tell the truth, her hands hinder more than they help, but Adaire doesn’t mind. 

There’s a moment of awkwardness, Adaire sitting on her heels and Hella half-turned towards her, as Adaire flicks strands of hair out of her face and tries to smooth out her skirt. Then Hella leans forward and kisses her, open-mouthed but frustratingly short. She pulls back and arranges herself on her back on the luxurious comforter, and grins. 

So that’s how it’s going to be, Varal, Adaire doesn’t say. She raises her eyebrow. 

In response, Hella pulls her shirt over her head and throws it off the side of the bed—which, with this bed, is a fairly long distance. Adaire’s eyes are drawn to the new expanse of bare skin. The hard lines of her stomach, the swell of her breasts, the scars that she’s accumulated over the years. A few of them Adaire recognizes from having bandaged the wounds, made Hella take care of them the best she could. She knows the curve of them, the raised texture, has run clinical fingers over them countless times. 

She wants to know them with her _mouth_. 

There is no way to be graceful about taking off her skirt without getting down from the bed, which would take far too much time, or standing on the mattress, which would look ridiculous. Adaire wriggles out of the skirt and kicks it to the floor. 

She peels Hella’s pants down her legs and tosses those too. This is now the most bare skin of Hella’s she’s seen, and she wastes no time getting her mouth on it, kissing Hella’s stomach and up her body. 

Hella squirms beneath her as Adaire takes her time at her collarbone, worries at Hella’s skin with her teeth until a swipe of her tongue makes Hella gasp. Adaire leans back, satisfied. Hella curses and reaches for her. Adaire takes one of her hands and kisses her knuckles. 

“Can you stay still?” Adaire asks.

Hella swallows and her fingers tighten their grip on Adaire’s waist, the fat she carries there. She nods. 

Adaire lets go of her and Hella immediately doesn’t know where to put her hands: palm up at her sides, grasping the comforter, fingers digging into her own thighs. 

“Put them above your head.”

Hella does. 

Adaire settles on the bed, one knee in between Hella’s legs. She gathers her hair over one shoulder and begins to undo the laces that hold her blouse together, working just a little slower than she has to. 

She smiles as Hella curses and twists her fingers together on the pillow. Hella catches her gaze and bites her lip, and that pulls the ground from under Adaire’s feet. She pulls her blouse off, clumsy with haste now. Hella stares at her wide-eyed, mouth open. 

"You're beautiful," she says.

Adaire wants to pause, crystalize this moment and keep it for herself and for Hella to remember her by, but Hella's lips are parted and slick and Adaire has to kiss them. Her hair falls in a curtain around their faces. The scent of perfume and then of sweat washes over them. 

Adaire presses her thigh between Hella’s legs and Hella jerks, one of her hands coming down to tangle in Adaire’s hair. Adaire pulls back to bite at her lower lip and Hella gasps. 

“Can I—” Hella’s hand spasms in Adaire’s hair. 

“Hm?”

Hella blinks up at her, eyes bright. “I wanna eat you out,” she says, “please.”

Adaire breathes in and out and then purses her lips and pretends to think about it. “Alright.” 

Hella shakes her head and curses at her, and the next second she’s hooked her leg around the backs of Adaire’s knees and flipped them over. Adaire lands on her back, her hair spread out wildly on the pillows. She has barely caught her breath in the face of Hella’s grin when Hella makes room for herself between her thighs. 

A shiver runs up the length of Adaire’s spine at the first touch of Hella’s lips to her cunt. Hella starts slow, alternating broad swipes of her tongue with slow teasing circles just above her clit. She keeps that up until Adaire’s hips are twitching up, seeking more friction. 

“Hella,” she gasps, and it sounds too loud in the quiet room, in the quiet house. Adaire claps one hand over her own mouth and slides the other one into Hella’s hair, messing up her bun. Hella grins and then lets Adaire pull her forward. She lavishes a searing kiss on her clit and sweeps her tongue over it in quick strokes. 

Adaire hooks a leg over Hella’s shoulder and muffles her moans against her palm. Heat builds in her stomach. Hella’s teeth graze her clit just as she pushes the tip of her finger into her and Adaire gasps and grinds up against Hella’s tongue and comes. 

Her chest heaves as she comes down. Hella rests her cheek on Adaire’s thigh. Adaire gazes down the length of her torso, expecting to see a shit-eating grin. Hella looks wrecked. Her hair is in disarray from Adaire’s fingers, her face is messy with Adaire’s slick, her lips are parted as she catches her breath. Adaire hauls her up by the hair and kisses her, tastes herself on Hella’s lips. 

“Here,” Adaire says, indistinct and soft, mostly to give Hella due warning before Adaire maneuvers her onto her back. Hella props herself up on her elbows, leaning in for a kiss. Adaire presses her back down, and then kisses her anyway.

She pushes one of Hella’s knees up and slides a hand between her legs. 

“You’re really wet,” she says, a little surprised, a little awe-struck. 

She doesn’t say it to tease, but Hella whines. The sound hits somewhere deep in Adaire’s chest. She braces herself with a hand on the flat planes of Hella’s stomach and rubs at her clit. Hella squirms, her arms everywhere at once. 

“Above your head,” Adaire says. 

Hella slides her hands up to the headboard. 

“Good.” Adaire drops a kiss to the side of Hella’s knee, moving her fingers faster over her clit. 

“Yeah,” Hella says, way too out of breath for her eyeroll to have its intended effect, “alright. Get on with it before I—” She gasps. 

Adaire tilts her head to the side and slows down her fingers. This time she’s definitely teasing. “Get on with…?”

Hella throws her head back and curses at her. 

“No fair.” Adaire’s smile shows in her tone. “Clue me in.” 

It takes Hella a few moments to get enough breath to answer—Adaire helpfully slows down even more and makes her touches less steady, more unpredictable. Hella tosses her head to try to push away some hair that has stuck to the sweat on her forehead, her hands still above her head, grasping her own forearms. Adaire reaches up and smoothes away the strands for her, tucking one that’s long enough behind Hella’s ear. Hella turns her cheek into Adaire’s palm and says, “Put your fingers in me already.” 

Now it’s Adaire’s turn to compose herself. She allows herself a second to cup Hella’s cheek, brush her thumb lightly over her lips. Hella kisses the pad of her thumb with a tenderness that makes Adaire’s skin itch with how comfortable and right it feels. 

Adaire does as Hella asked, starts with one finger. Hella’s leg kicks out and she whimpers. 

Adaire stills. “How’s that feel?” 

“Good,” Hella says, “It’s good, Adaire _please_.” 

Her whole body is a line of tension from her thighs to her arms resting on the pillows near her head. Adaire leans down to mouth at the scars that line her stomach. She traces her tongue up a near-vertical mark and then she can’t help continuing up to get her mouth on Hella’s breasts.

She gives Hella the heel of her hand to rub up against as she works in a second finger. Hella shudders and moans, and cuts off in a gasp when Adaire closes her mouth around her nipple. Adaire fucks her and drags her tongue over her nipple. She bites down lightly. Hella whines, and then she’s coming on Adaire’s fingers. 

Still catching her breath, Hella starts to laugh. 

“What?”

Hella presses her face into her arm. “I wonder who heard that.”

Adaire thinks of Hadrian, and Samol, and Lem. Oops. She laughs too, and then shrugs. “Let them know.”

Her stomach immediately clenches. That was a dumb thing to just say, what if Hella—

Hella nods, still smiling in a languid way. She doesn’t seem inclined to move on her own, so Adaire takes her hands and pulls them down, kisses the crescents she dug into her forearms. Hella lets her, and then runs her fingers over Adaire’s head, nails grazing her scalp. 

“I could braid your hair,” she says. 

Adaire looks at her to make sure she’s serious and she nods. 

Hella sits up and Adaire sits in front of her. They don’t have a brush and Adaire will be damned before she suggests either of them getting off the bed to look for one at the moment, but Hella makes do with gently combing through tangles with her fingers. 

Hella’s steady hands and the repetitive tugging are soothing. Adaire is almost disappointed when Hella finishes. She has done a simple three-part braid in the Ordenan style, hugging Adaire’s scalp from the crown of her head to the base of her neck. Hella tucks the tail of the braid over Adaire’s shoulder and kisses the nape of her neck. 

Adaire sighs and leans back into Hella’s arms and relaxes.

**Author's Note:**

> i almost titled this after a lyric from three wishes by the pierces, so, you're welcome


End file.
